160 Mac Minis - one rack

[bitcoindaddy]

I was more fascinated by their custom cooling solution than anything else:

http://hackaday.com/2012/12/09/160-mac-minis-one-rack/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29

[crazyates]

That's pretty awesome! I have to wonder tho: what's he running that needs Mac Server?

[gweedo]

A wiki? It looks like a company wide time machine back, I think that would be the most logical thing.

[P_Shep]

Just... why?

[Gatorhex]

Just... why?

Because he is paying for co-location per floor tile so packing in as many web servers as he can on one tile I suspect. You use mac mini because they are small and low power.

[ice_chill]

Does the performance of the MAC MINI justify the price, when compares to a proper rack server ?
As far as I know Apple products are known for being overpriced, the whole project looks more like a concept rather than something practical.

[mrb]

You guys need to read the freaking hackaday comments. The guy explained he has workloads that need to run on Mac OS X. For whatever reasons (legal ones), virtualization was not possible, so he needed Apple hardware to run OS X. Given this constraint, the choice of Mac Minis was the best one.

[BR0KK]

There is also a service in US that you can rent a mac via Remote Desktop. Or you can store your mac in a datacenter...

[hardcore-fs]

Does the performance of the MAC MINI justify the price, when compares to a proper rack server ?
As far as I know Apple products are known for being overpriced, the whole project looks more like a concept rather than something practical.

Because you can do things on a mac that you cannot do on 'easily' other hardware...

Let's say for example you are running Xcode, macs have the ability to run as a 'farm' service, that is to say that if you have a corporate network with macs, each and every one  is able to share the processing power of the others and it is built right into the applications.

Just plug the shit together, its all automatic.

[pc]

Servers of Mac minis aren't really new… I remember seeing Macminicolo years ago. Definitely a niche market kind of thing, but fun to see the pictures of.

[BR0KK]

Does the performance of the MAC MINI justify the price, when compares to a proper rack server ?
As far as I know Apple products are known for being overpriced, the whole project looks more like a concept rather than something practical.

Because you can do things on a mac that you cannot do on 'easily' other hardware...

Let's say for example you are running Xcode, macs have the ability to run as a 'farm' service, that is to say that if you have a corporate network with macs, each and every one  is able to share the processing power of the others and it is built right into the applications.

Just plug the shit together, its all automatic.

How does that work?

[BR0KK]

so you need software for that, not just a mac

[hardcore-fs]

No you don't need 'different' software, it is built into the os.
 Yes granted you can implement it on linux with additional software, but if your applications are not designed from scratch to scale.... then they won't. (the same way 8-16 CPU wont make a difference if your 1 CPU application is not multithreaded)

If the programmer of an application CORRECTLY calls the apple routines for allocating resources, and IF the system is enabled, then the OS automatically handles it.

So if you have a really big compile job or render and your 16CPU's are not enough, then the OS allocates the work to other macs on the network.


its not about  Mac Vrs others, but rather properly thought out integration without having to jump through hoops to accomplish it.

[Oldsport]

That's pretty awesome! I have to wonder tho: what's he running that needs Mac Server?

"Since this deisgn was for a data center, the Minis would have to draw power from a Power Distribution Unit (PDU)"

[mrb]

Because you can do things on a mac that you cannot do on 'easily' other hardware...

Let's say for example you are running Xcode, macs have the ability to run as a 'farm' service, that is to say that if you have a corporate network with macs, each and every one  is able to share the processing power of the others and it is built right into the applications.

Just plug the shit together, its all automatic.

You are wrong. There is no "automatic farm service" in Mac OS X.

If you are referring to the ability in Xcode to do distributed builds, well, it is a feature built specifically in Xcode, not in the OS. If you are referring to Grand Central Dispatch and the C extensions to do automated threading, well it is constrained to a single machine, there is certainly no "farm" support.

[GoldSeal]

Seems like a tremendous waste of money. If someone pitched anything like this with my employer, they'd be laughed out of the office.